Karadzic: Military and Political Structures Linked
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During the course of his examination, General Smith confirmed that he was tasked with making sure the ceasefire agreement signed by the two warring parties would be respected in the Sarajevo area in 1995.
He said he met Hague indictees Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the commander of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, who is on the run, several dozen times that year.
“The meetings were mostly held on Jahorina or in Pale – near Sarajevo. My conclusion at that time, and I still think the same, was that the Bosnian Serbs’ political and military structures were ‘on the same front’ during the course of the war, which means that the VRS actions were coordinated by top Bosnian Serb authorities,” Smith explained.
Karadzic, former President of Republika Srpska and supreme Commander of its armed forces, is indicted for genocide, crimes against humanity and violation of the laws and customs of war committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995.
He is on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY, in the Hague.
General Smith said that at their joint meetings, Karadzic never denied the shelling or killing of civilians in Sarajevo by snipers, but he never accepted the possibility that VRS members could stop their actions targeted at civilian positions.
“Karadzic always responded by saying: ‘We are doing it to them because they are doing it to us…Since you, as UNPROFOR, are not doing anything to prevent it, I have to do it instead,’” Smith said, adding that, in 1995 members of the UN force felt like shields and hostages at the same time, because they found themselves caught between the warring parties.
Karadzic is charged with a sniping and shelling campaign conducted in Sarajevo with the aim of spreading fear among the civilian population. Thousands of civilians were killed or wounded in the campaign.
Smith also recalled when UN observers were captured. Serb forces took them to potential targets of NATO strikes and chained them to those targets in May and June 1995, he explained. The witness said that he was once threatened over the phone by someone who said that the captured UN members would be slaughtered unless the NATO strikes were “stopped immediately”.
The indictment alleges that in May and June 1995, Karadzic participated in a joint criminal enterprise with the aim of taking UN staff hostage in order to force NATO to restrain from conducting air strikes against Bosnian Serb military targets.
General Smith said that, following the NATO strikes on strategic VRS positions, Serb forces responded by attacking all protected enclaves, which resulted in a large number of victims.
In an attempt to show the commanding link between Karadzic and VRS, Prosecutor Alan Tieger read a directive, addressed to VRS members, issued by the indictee in March 1995.
Tieger said that the document mentioned that it was necessary to “create an unbearable situation of total insecurity and show Srebrenica and Zepa residents that there was no hope for their survival or future life in that area”.
The trial is due to continue on February 9.
D.E.
